Monday, July 6, 2015

Even though I knew this day would come, I don’t much like
it. I’m sitting in a very quiet house today because yesterday I made the very
hard choice to help Smudge leave this world of pain.

She was a good cat.

When I posted something on Facebook, just a sweet picture of
her wandering in front of the azaleas this spring, I knew that most would figure
out the reason I had changed my profile picture. Condolences came in from just
about every continent – Australia, Asia, Europe, South America, Africa.

Smudge had led such a well-traveled and well-documented life that not only did she have fans and followers from everywhere, but a good
portion of those people had met her. Or had come face to face with her as she
glared at them from under a chair or behind a door.

Because let’s face it, Smudge only liked one person. Me. And
even I got on her nerves from time to time. This was a cat who would not deign
to sit on my lap for the first ten years of her life. When she finally
discovered the joys of lap-sitting, I could not keep her away, even when the
temperature hovered in the 90s. In her later years, she would camp out there
for as long as I would let her, tucking her head under and having a look of
sheer contentment on her face.

When we adopted Smudge from the Humane Society, she got her
name because she was just a tiny gray smudge of a thing, small enough to fit in
the palm of our hand. I knew I would adopt her when I lifted her out of her
cage and she started purring.

Home for most of her life was our house on Burlington Place,
where she could sit on the window seat in the family room watching the birds
fly by, or sit on the back patio catching a few rays of sun. She was too timid
to wander much past our little yard, and that was fine by me.

She was still a young cat when we moved with her to Brussels
for a year. There we lived in a four-story townhouse with a walled-in garden, a
lovely spot when it wasn’t raining. I thought it kept Smudge from wandering
far, but one day I saw her high atop a ten-foot wall and knew that her European
adventures were bigger than I realized.

Our favorite story about Smudge in Brussels involved the
trauma of the move. We were living in a temporary apartment with a fireplace.
As we were in the processing of moving to our townhouse, Daniel called me and
said, “I can’t find Smudge. I think she either took the elevator down or jumped
off the fourth-floor balcony of the apartment.”

I rushed back to the apartment. Before I could start the
search, Smudge appeared from a ledge inside the very dirty fireplace. She was
covered in soot, a true smudge. That was, I suppose, one of her nine lives
gone.

Getting her back to Washington seemed relatively easy, and I
could tell that she knew she was home again the minute she got into our house.

Over the next dozen years, she had the life of a cat,
getting chubby and lazy, lolling in the sunshine and rebuffing any attempts by
the kids to make friends with her. She was a quiet cat, hardly mewing or making
any kind of sound.

I’d look down and there was her dark presence, by my side.
If it wasn’t possible to be in my lap, she’d content herself with being near me
in a room or begging treats from me in the kitchen.

She never much loved the Chinese brand of cat food so I
became a cat food Sherpa, bringing dozens of cans of high end cat food from the
U.S. to satisfy her elderly and finicky palate. She even had a food donation
from the American ambassador. When Ambassador Max Baucus and his wife were
moving to China, they also moved a giant bin of cat food with them. But somehow
the cat didn’t make the trip, and so we ended up with a diplomatic delivery of
Iams cat food that lasted Smudge many months.

In China, she would sit on a chair by the window of our
glassed-in quasi-patio area, while I typed on the computer. As an older girl,
she didn’t have much interest in the magpies that landed in the trees outside
the windows. Then again, she wasn’t much bothered by the endless hours of
fireworks on Chinese new year either, so that was a good thing.

And even though I knew she was slowly dying of renal
failure, she lasted long enough that she was able to enjoy the warm weather of
a Washington spring and part of the summer.

We had an overload of rabbits in DC
this year, and one day I looked up to see Smudge bouncing after a bunny who was
as big as she was. There was life in the old girl to the end.

By the end, she was ready to end the pain. She didn’t want
to be touched, she stopped eating and drinking, and her plaintive cries were
wrenching. It was time.

When I brought her to the animal hospital, I never left her
side. I held her in her red blanket that she loved, and I talked to her and pet
her, my tears dropping down on her head as I spoke. She went peacefully, and
then she wasn’t there any more.

Later on Sunday, I went out into my garden, and there, as if
it was waiting for me, was the tiniest bunny I had ever seen, with big brown
eyes. It was just a smudge of a thing.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

For those of you who are not following my so-called oversharing on Facebook, I want to announce that the NYK Meteor has docked in Norfolk. I resisted the urge to drive down there and check it out, and maybe even tow the whole thing back to Burlington Place.

Now I wish I had.

This is the response from our relocation agent, who does not seem particularly concerned:

Yes, I have received arrival notice on the vessel but the tracking you may have seen is only related to the vessel arrival. I have not received information on discharge yet. The container release is also pending customs clearance so that can be at least another 7 to 10 working days. Right now, I would not estimate delivery until possibly the week of February 23. I may have a better idea by the end of the week.

Then she asks if we have any travel plans in the next few weeks.Great. Our life has been on hold for three months, and we still don't have any real handle on a delivery date. If only I had known it would take this long....

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Just when you think that you're making progress in this whole move-back-to-America thing, the whole thing comes to a screeching halt. Literally.

Yesterday, I was excited to see that the NYK Meteor had exited the Panama Canal and was sitting way way off the coast of Panama. When I logged on today, I expected to see it making its way up along the coast of Cuba.

Nope. The NYK Meteor is "at anchor" in the same spot as yesterday, no matter how many times I hit the "refresh" button. (Hey, it beats driving editors crazy, not that it's totally stopped me from doing that either.)

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE: I just went online to double check the "at anchor" posting and saw that the NYK Meteor is now "underway using engine." Be still, my beating heart. Cuba, here we come!!!

I'm going to try to ignore the photos sent to me by some of my oh-so-funny friends of what could go wrong.

CORRECTION: Upon further investigation, I see now that the NYK Meteor is headed back to the Manzanillo International port in Panama. So much for Cuba.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Sea shipment update: I just found the NYK Meteor in the Panama Canal, right next to the Parque Nacionale Camino de Cruces, which just sounds lovely. I'm hoping my deviled egg plate is enjoying the view.

Friday, January 30, 2015

It's been quiet lately here in the U.S., not because life has been quiet (see under: hospital visits, Florida, demanding editors, house in chaos), but because it's been just a touch busy.

Meanwhile, we are living in a bit of suspended animation because our sea shipment, which we thought we'd have long before now, has been delayed by some kind of labor work slowdown on the West Coast of the U.S.

I took it upon myself to track the ship, just to get a sense of where it might be. It's amazing how much Google will find for you, especially if you're not in a country where the whole Internet thing is a little threatening. Sorry, China folks.

Anyway, I learned the container ship that holds our container (and that of about a gazillion other people) made multiple stops in the last two months: out of Tianjin, to Busan, South Korea; Kobe, Japan; Nagoya, Tokyo, Vancouver, Seattle, Oakland, LA. Right now, as far as I can tell the NYK Meteor has left the LA port and is heading to the Panama Canal.

How do I know this? I found various trackers. First I got a cute photo of our ship:

(See the container on the very last row, kind of balancing off the back of the ship? Why do I think that's the one that holds our coffee table, cat carrier, vacuum cleaner, coffee maker, and deviled egg plate? Because it's the way my mind works.)

And then I found something even cooler: a map that shows the exact spot where our ship is now, heading down past Mexico to the Panama Canal:

If that's true, progress is being made.
After it sails through the Panama Canal, it's supposed to stop in Manzanillo, Panama, and then up to Savannah, Georgia and Norfolk. After that, it's supposed to be offloaded and trucked to Baltimore, and then will swing back south again and arrive at our doorstep.

Bob and I joke that by the time our sea shipment arrives, we may well be ready to leave again, so we'll just have them reload it to somewhere else.